Awakenings

1990 American drama film by Penny Marshall

Awakenings is a 1990 American biographical drama film based on the 1973 non-fiction book of the same name. Directed by Penny Marshall, it was written for the screen by Steven Zaillian, who based his screenplay on Oliver Sacks's 1973 memoir of the same name. It tells the story of neurologist Dr. Malcolm Sayer, based on Sacks, who discovers the beneficial effects of the drug L-DOPA in 1969. He administers it to catatonic patients who survived the 1919–1930 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica. Leonard Lowe and the rest of the patients are awakened after decades, and have to deal with a new life in a new time. Julie Kavner, Ruth Nelson, John Heard, Penelope Ann Miller, Peter Stormare and Max von Sydow also star in the cast. Awakenings was produced by Walter Parkes and Lawrence Lasker, who first encountered Sacks's book as undergraduates at Yale, and optioned it a few years later. The film was a critical and commercial success, earning $108.7 million on a $29 million budget, and was nominated for three Academy Awards.

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